Foundry Manual
Introduction Awesome!! You got your hands on the foundry. Now how do you go about creating your q uests? You normally won't be able to create content right away. Your best bet is to familiarize yourself with the tool. Experiment first, you wont break anything - and then go back offline and think of a concept, design it maybe on a peice of paper creating a rough story like a comic strip, and then come back to create some good content. This manual will help you when experimenting with tools but in no way can it replace the actual hands-on experience that you will get from pure trial and error handling of the program. Character Select When you first login to the foundry you should come to the screen shown below left... The character that you see here is automatically generated for you. So that if you wish you can jump straight in and get designing! 'Areas of Importance' Now upon studying the screenshot to the left you will see various important options: Bug: '''You can submit a bug report by using that green bug button, at the top left of your screen. ''This button may not be available on release..'' ' '''Version:' Written in the top middle of the screen in white. Use this to check your build version and see if it is current or not. This is Important to those who have disabled on-demand patching. Logout: This button teleports you outside the wonderhome of Gond! Back to reality!' ' Options: '''Here you can change all the video, gameplay and sound options. '''Support: Use this in order to Generate a support ticket.' '''A cs representitive will then be in touch soon.. This can take some time depending on demand. ''Important options(cont): Exit the Foundry: '''This beautiful button takes you to the game. It is disabled when the gameservers are not live, perhaps during a patch. '''Buy: This button allows you to purchase various foundry upgrades for zen including charcter slots. Enter the Foundry: 'Now this particular button is a complete mystery, I wonder.. 'Deletion You can delete the character and then create a new one anytime. Infact, when your character gets bugged (naked, looses skills, you respecced messed it up) just delete the character and recreate. Believe me, it may happen a lot. Good thing is that the foundry character is completely separate and unrelated to your game character. This one will have no bearing on your other two in game. As in previous cases just re-enter the name to confirm deletion. <------"Yeah, he does that - just beachy!" 'New Character Button' Press on the now-enabled "New Character" button. The following screens allow you to customise this character, like you would any other character in the normal game, outside of the foundry. This is so you can test different looks and builds, compare them to your quests and surroundings and get everything just right.. For instance you can test your foundry UGC by creating each class in turn, then rolling through calculating the difficulty for each type of class, until you get the spawns just right! The character is created as soon as you press ok after naming. Then the character screen will close. Now you may progress to the next screen by using "Enter the foundry" button from character screen. You have mastered the 1st stage of the foundry. You can enter only when you have at least 1 valid character. However the content of foundry is not tied to any one character. Your choice of shard will not matter. You may get logged out so just log back in. You may also have to wait in a queue if your not a founder.. 'Selection Menu' 'selection screen:' Previous: This button on the far lower left takes you to Character Selection screen. Left Side: ' If this is your first time, this will be an empty space with four options at the bottom. *'Buy Slots: This Button Opens the zen shop to by more slots. *'Delete: '''This deletes any quest or campaign you have selected. Type the name in the window that pops up to confirm deletion. *'New Quest:' This button opens up the *'New Campaign:' You can only create a New Campaign if you have at least one published quest. '''Right Side:'Various screenshots will show what option you have: When you select a campaign(shown as in diamond box on left side tab instead of ) you have an option to EDIT it and two tabs. Edit will open the campaign for editing it(later on that). Main shows the description of campaign you give. Also, "Last Updated" and "NW-number" is shown. Quote NW number in all communications. You can change the name of quest/campaign anytime, NW number is the identity of the campaign/quest which never changes. The next MAP tab shows the location of the quest icons of all the quests in the campaign(more on how to make them later). The icons are determined from the quests itself and you cannot edit them. You can however choose the picture above the tabs (where SHARDS OF SELUNE is written) when editing campaign. 'Choosing a Quest ' Here I chose the last one, a quest. Stars are displayed in yellow with how many people played it in a bracket. On the right side, we have three tabs and two buttons this time. *'Edit:' Will open the quest for editing. *'Duplicate: '''Very important function. It will duplicate your quest and copy it as "Copy of" and make a new one. This function is required as what you do is make all the costumes to be used in first quest. Then duplicate that quest to duplicate all the costume for later new quests which can then be reused. You can delete the other stuff and keep any map, costume or item you need in your new quest which is a copy of another quest. 'Tabs' *'Reviews:' It shows Tips received, More reviews as a next page button, and reviewswith stars hidden behind names as a weird UI bug which is being looked into. *'Maps:' This shows the icon for the first map in the quest. How to choose itwisely will be dealt in later advanced concepts. *Main: All quests have NW- as prefix in NW number, while campaigns have NWS- prefix. Rest all is same - it shows the description. 'Campaign Editor Now we will talk about campaign menu. Select a campaign(if you have one, otherwise skip to quest creation part) and press edit. Notice that Duplicating campaign is not possible. The reason will become clear once you know what campaign is. *'''Return: Takes you back to selection menu. *'Save Campaign:' Save button. *'Campaign Name:' A short 32 character name. ASCII characters are allowed, but don't abuse them or quest won't show up in search. Or abuse them so quest remains private. Creativity triumphs tools! *'Campaign Description:' 1000 letter description. Don't forget to add "Tagz: " line on top. *'Banner Image:' The picture that will show up when you select campaign. Choose one which describes your campaign, or the one which is pretty. *'Campaign Quests:' The quests in campaign in playing order. As a good practice, only add quests which have been published once already. *'Add, Delete:-' Add/delete the quests to campaign. They do not delete the quest, just remove it from campaign and place it alone. *'Up/Down:-' Change playing sequence of the quests. Quest Creator From the selection menu choose, create quest and it will take you to the screen on the right.. And then Below... Hmm... Yeah it takes time when you first load it. The game patches up and downloads resources like pictures, UI elements on-demand. Pretty nifty actually. Keeps your client updated too! TA-DA! This is the Quest creator. Know it, love it and may it smile back at you! Now after looking at it and appreciating how lovely the roundness of font looks (what? You don't notice it? Ha! You never had to see its early ugly mug in alpha. Trust me, this is a beautiful elven lass while that was old dwarven woman with a beard... Not that I have anything against dwarven wom Category:Foundry Manual